Monthly Archives: April 2013

I had wanted to try out the Nokia Lumia 800 as many who owned it spoke in praise on who smooth and slick the interface was, and this was truly credible considering similar single core equipped Snapdragon S1/S2 Android phones were stuttering in comparison. However Microsoft dropped the bombshell by stating that none of the WP7 devices going to be upgraded to WP8, since they had said a higher bar for the minimum spec.

While the users of WP7 would have been very frustrated, the launch of the WP8 devices saw some great designs specially from Nokia, with HTC being a bit conservative compared to their Android offerings. The operating system brought many good opinions, but how does it stack up on every day use.

My experiences of WP8 are based on using the Nokia 620 and the 920, that provided me an idea of how it runs in base hardware, and somewhat higher spec hardware.

Touch and general OS navigation

The operating system has lived up to its smooth origins seen in WP7, and definitely had many Android users says how smooth the interface was. Even Apple users commented positively on this, indicating Microsoft has got something right and not messed it up with the newer WP8.

Physical buttons

The phones currently have 3 physical buttons which seem to have the following capabilities.

Windows button. Which takes you to the new desktop which features the tiles

Back button. Pressing this while in app takes you back within the app, and if you click the Windows button and then press this it recycles through existing apps and you can keep on pressing this to finally hasten the process of closing the app. If you keep holding this button it will show you the current running apps and you can manually select an app to get to it rather than having to recycle through.

Search button, to bring the Bing search, to me this is of very little value.

Closing or selecting a running app

One feature that takes a while to get used to , and i feel is still lacking is the fact that you can’t actually close an directly. The famous minimize, maximize and close buttons we are familiar with Windows are not there which is good as it goes with the other mobile platforms, but unlike with Apple or Android you have no way to kill an app. Microsoft says WP8 being a true multi-tasking operating system compared to iOS and Android, is capable handling applications in similar lines to the JVM concept of Java, but if you really need to close an application this could have been easy achieved.

For instance if you hold the back button for a while it shows the current running applications similar to the what Android and iOS do, but you can swipe or press on a cross to close the app, but this to me is something that can be done easily and i wonder if its any patent that is holding back Microsoft from implementing this basic feature.

The desktop or as MS calls it Live Tiles

The desktops and widgets in Android, was not something that Google invented since these was possible with the Great Symbian operating system. Apple looked simple without it but seems the market is now shouting for something similar even from Apple, and they are supposed to deliver something different for the first time in iOS wit version 7 to support this.

Microsoft answer with Windows Phone has been live tiles, and while it has been unique and effective, to me the multiple desktops concept of Android and Symbian is more efficient when you have loads of stuff that you want to access, where a single scrolling desktop becomes limiting.

Fonts and scaling

The fonts in WP8 like WP7 are clear and sharp but sadly they are a bit too large for me. The smallest size is rather to clunky, and due to this in places like Live Tiles, the Calendar you see only a little information. However the ability to scale further seems limited, and hopefully Microsoft can provide a fix for this in the upcoming patch.

Resolution Support

With WP8 Microsoft also brought the ability to support higher resolutions since WP7 was limited to 800×480. The budget WP8 phones such as Lumia still have this resolution, but the higher end phones support 720P with 1280×800 screens. This resolution competed with the 2012 line of Androids and Apple, but with 2013 bring Full HD resolution to Android phones the market has moved on. Microsoft is due to provide the patch that will support enhanced resolutions as newer phones are due to release with Full HD screens during the later part of 2013.

Hopefully this means support for better use of the resolution will also come, since at present there is no split view even for emails, which i find in Android which improves navigation and gives near Windows desktop usability.

Phone and contact features, good but still not good as Android

WP8 has very good usability and coverage on basic call features of a phone with easy dialing with its simple uncluttered interface.

Phonebook loads fast, and the search is fast and easy.

You can pin to start any contact, making your favorites easy to call

Adding a call to an existing call (for conference features) is easy but has a major limitation, it only allows you to add from the history, you cannot access the phonebook, OUCH

Speakerphone is easy to switch, but the touch can be too sensitive, one has to be a bit delicate in pressing the button

The default keyboard is quite effective in word correction and nice to type on, far better than many native keyboards on Android devices, but still not as effective as SwiftKey that i normally use with my android devices. Third party keyboards are not available in the store, and i am not sure if such is possible with the nature of the OS.

I find the favorites and group feature useful and familiar which i used with Symbian and found in Android as well. This allowed me to group people and access them without having to go to the search feature. While the pin to start can achieve some sort of favorite concept, having this in the contacts search is a must have when the screen sizes are still comparatively limited.

Messaging, good but seems no one spoke to real users

The basic messaging features are covered well, but seems to be more favoring MMS, with the conversation thread feature a MMS only capability.

One big limitation that i had was with adding of contacts to a message. White you can type part of the name, it seems to limit the names. For example i had my contacts synchronized from Google, and any contact who had numbers as “other” type were not listed, and you had to and select the “+” and search and add the number, which was very annoying

The backup of texts to the cloud is there, but the backed up messages are not readable. Meaning unlike some third party SMS backup tools for Android which creates a new flag (=folder) in your Google account to keep your messages (hence you can search or read them through Google mail), the contents of the message backup is not visible on your skydrive storage, and seems to be a hidden store that only WP8 can retrieve, so while its useful its lacking the full usability i would want from this backup feature.

Calendar features, severely lacking

The calendar features sadly to me are rather lacking which is very astonishing for me. Microsoft with such a strong background on the desktop with Outlook has failed here in great style, though the interface in general is nice. Even feature phones (aka non-smartphones) have much better calendar implementations.

Month calendar view is MISSING. Not only is it missing, but the Microsoft developers have CHEATED. If you go to the month view, it does show a view, but its not readable. If you take a screen snapshot and then check it out on a computer you will see that it has some “test data”, which may explain why they have purposefully made the font not readable. This to me is inexcusable.

The current views implemented “agenda”, “to-do” are rather skimpy and minimalist.

Live tiles for calendars are supported but only one event can be shown. Supposedly the next release will allow you to see 3, but stills that very limiting, and currently its downright useless

File Explorer, nope never heard of that

After being a Symbian user for many years and then an Android user, a file manager to me is like a must have. This applies to my Windows desktop usage as well. With Apple i found this “securing the content” and lacking a file manager a major hurdle, as i could not open a file with the application i wanted. Well i expected that WP8 will be more like Windows, though WP7 was more like Apple.

Well i was in for a big disappointment, there is no file manager in WP8, and you are unlikely to get one is the general talk. Hence if you want to manage your files you have to do it via a PC. However the only good side with WP8 is that you can connect it and manage your files from your File Explorer without needing the Zune app which was what you had to do with WP7, so some positive changes and shifts from the Apple like way, but still not good enough for me.

Synchronization and storage support

The big change with WP8 compared to the WP7 is the MTP mode support. With WP7 it was just like iTunes in some ways that you had to convert content to copy, and that was it. Further with WP7 you had on support for MicroSD cards.

With WP8 you just connect the device (as you would do with an Android device) and it loads as a MTP compatible storage. You can copy and restructure the unrestricted contents through Windows explorer. If the device had a Micro SD this is also visible and accessible making content transfer easy and simple. This is a definitely a big positive for WP8 compared to Apple and allows it to compete into the Android space, since the Zune feature very much like iTunes has been seen as a limitation for many where content is normally not purchased from online stores, but rather from local sources.

However with the fact that for many apps seems incapable of accessing files copied into the device, and only able to list apps downloaded this advantage seems to be only valid for video and music, which i think is a big limitation which i hope Microsoft will remove by providing app developers better APIs that expose such contents.

Browsing

WP8 ships with an IE10 based mobile browser that is major overhaul compared to the older IE versions on the WP7 phones. IE10 on WP8 is quite smooth and fast, but definitely plays second fiddle to the Android flagships and the Apple on the browser speeds.

However third party browsers are still lacking with the UC Browser the only major alternative. I tried this out and while it was fast, it seems to have memory issues in its present state.

Major alternatives such as Firefox and Opera are still not available, and the chance of Chrome coming to WP8 will only occur if WP8 turns out to be major player in the mobile market, currently with under 3% of the market i don’t see Google paying too much interest.

Music and Video Playback

This is handled mainly by the players provided by the phone manufacturer based on the standard player. The player from Nokia does a commendable job, but i am sure you will find a video format or two not supported.

However no strong alternatives are available on the store on this area as yet. VLC is supposedly working on an RT based version, but with the challenges adobe has faced putting out a PDF reader due to limited RT libraries available for the WP8 compared to the RT on the tab may also impact VLC in putting out a player quickly.

Camera

The generic camera app has evolved so says Microsoft, but to me the interface is still very primitive. While the ability to see pictures taken is now on the interface, and some key options such as flash can be selected, the rest are still text options and there is no provision to select them and add to the interface. However the ability to add new lens, which allows third party developers to integrate their features directly into the stock camera app is cool and something very innovative.

Microsoft Office support

The major selling point of WP8 is that it ships with a free version of Office that has Word, Excel, PowerPoint and One Note. Windows RT tablet devices do not come with a free version of Office, and you have to purchase it.

While the other three are full fledged applications with some limitations, OneNote for WP8 and for RT is a very limited version compared to what you have with Windows 8 desktop!

With OneNote for WP8 you can only do the following,

Enter a text type note

Enter a checklist type note

Even basic features such as indenting a list item are only possible with the options menu with no easy tool bar, and features such as emoticon support for list items, drawing, etc are completely missing.

PDF and E-book support

While one now takes PDF and E-book support for granted, think again when it comes to WP8.

PDF is supported only via the Microsoft PDF Reader, which can only support reading PDF files downloaded. Files copied to the internal storage, or files in the SD card are not listed, and hence you cannot open them. Useless.

Native support for EPUB or MOB file formats are missing. While there are third party apps for this, they all require you to download, and they cannot access the internal storage or SD card. Which means files you copy or have with you cannot be opened. Massive failure for WP8 once again.

Games

I am not commenting here, since i have not tried them out. However going through the store, most apps have the TRY option which is nice, but on the whole the number of popular titles are very minimal, and its very very early days for WP8 at present.

Many thought that with the common platform Microsoft so heavily spoke of, including me a person with .NET development background it was sad to hear that when it comes to developing hard core applications the RT libraries for mobile and tablets (do note that tablet version is also feature in the normal full Windows 8 machines), the common part is rather limiting is the general opinion, i intend to do a bit more research here to update the situation. But if this is true, just because a game is available for RT for tab and desktops means, its going to be easily available for the WP8 version is not a fair assumption.

FM radio support

WP8 does NOT support radio features at present. However support for this is due with the 8.1 patch that Microsoft is supposed to deliver soon. Phone manufacturers such as Nokia seem to be aware of this, and current devices such as the 620 and 920 are supposedly having the radio hardware, and this will be accessible once the radio features are made available with the 8.1 update from Microsoft.

Microsoft App Store

I have already spoken on the app store in line with general phone features, but from the common stack here is a quick review. My general opinions is while there is around 20-30% who will by many different apps including games, many smart phone users by it mainly for limited use, and need only a core stack of use for general usages.

App

WP8

Android

iOS

Skype

Native

Native

Native

Twitter

Native Limited features

Native

Native

WhatsApp

Native Limited

Native

Native

FaceBook

OS built in, Limited

Native

Native

Google Maps

Native via Nokia Maps

Native

Native

Stock Browser

IE10

Chrome

Safari

Chrome

Not available

Stock, Native

Native Limited

YouTube

Not available

Stock, Native

Stock, Native

Office

Stock, Native, Free

Third Party, Limited

Third Party, Limited

PDF Support

Native App, Limited

Adobe, and many other Native

Native + Third Party

Viber

Native, Limited

Native

Native

Conclusion

I really like the smooth interface of WP8, and the fact that it offers more freedom that what i found with iOS/ITunes. Its like something in between Android and iOS and Microsoft has a sound platform here. But sadly Microsoft seems to be not understanding their user base, or are talking to the wrong user base as evident by the simple mistakes they have in the phone, calendar and other areas that i spoke of.

Its just not the app store that matters, and Microsoft needs to understand that, before the app store you also need to get the basic phone capabilities sorted, and that is something i feel Microsoft has not understood.

I will continue to use a WP8 phone as a backup device hoping that MS will improve it fast and get it where it should be, but right now progress is very slow, and MS is not getting the basics sorted as seen with the Portico release. Reluctantly i will have to shift back to an Android as my main phone.

A friend of mine had one the Acer W510 Windows Tablet Convertible he had won as well as as the prize for an event conducted and sponsored by Microsoft for students to promote writing apps for Windows 8. He brought the device as he was about to dispose it and move to an Apple Mac (yeah a Mac, supposedly it ran windows on a VM far more efficient and reliably than native Windows on any other hardware, scary) for me to get a quick feel of the device and Windows 8 on a tablet device.

Readers be aware that this is a device running normal Windows 8 on a tablet, and not the tablet friendly RT device. To me devices such as the Acer W510 make far better sense, than a pure Windows RT device with the arrival of the newer range of lower power (ULV) Atom and Intel Core series based devices. Why would you want to limited yourself to RT specific apps, when you can have both RT and Windows apps in one device!

For those who are not aware, Windows 8 comes in many flavors, not just versions. The normal windows 8 as we know is a upgrade of Windows 7 can can any windows application. However recently Microsoft launched a version called Windows 8 RT, which is a pure tablet device that uses a new set of libraries for developers to write pure tab applications. These can be run on normal Windows 8 as well as Windows 8 RT devices. However Windows 8 RT devices cannot run normal Windows applications, so you are limited, severely limited if you buy a RT device.

The Acer W510 runs a normal version of Windows 8, with the only limitation being that it is a 32-bit version of Windows 8, as 64-bit is not supported by the hardware used, and it is also limited to 2GB memory, both harking back to netbook origins.

What is a Tablet Convertible

A tablet convertible as they call it is a device that can work as tablet device, and also provide almost laptop like functionality to the user. The devices in the past used to come in mainly as rotating screens (either you twist it to face you, or as in the case of DELL with their swinging screens on a frame). However with Intel working hard on reducing the power consumption and heat generation of their processors to make the mobile friendly, the time has come where the laptop internals have all moved to the screen, making truly tablet like formats possible, which is where the Acer W510 fits in.

The hardware

The Acer W510 is what is labeled as a budget tablet convertible, but its not by any means a cheap device, since it cost more than many far more powerful ultra portable laptops. The term convertible here means that you can use the device purely as a tablet, or when connected to the optional dock, as a laptop.

However the advantage a convertible device provides is that it can be used a tablet and if required to a lesser degree as a laptop. Its this key advantage that also makes the prices high, but the Acer W510 is one of the cheapest (and least powerful) devices in this market, as most other feature far more powerful Intel Core i3/5/7 processor based solutions including Acer’s own W700. I am sure by the end of this year we will see a lot more such devices, and the ultabooks may switch to this format since the ultra books in the current format have not faired well against the Mac Air and MacBook Pro devices.

So what powers the Acer W510. Let me discuss each separately

Processor

Processing is handled by an Intel “Clover Trail” Atom Z2670 1.8Ghz dual-core processor. This is better regarded for its very low 1.7W TDP power consumption than processing power. The desktop version of this model is the N2600 Atom. The Z2670 Atom is a lot more powerful than the Atom processor range that used to power the rather primitive netbooks until recently, and yet it consumes nearly half the power compared to the previous gen Atom dual-core. However compared to a Core i3 or even a dual-core Celeron based on the Sandy Bridge or Ivy line, this processor can be considered very very limiting for high end stuff, but for normal usage (web browsing, document editing, etc) this should be more than sufficient.

Graphics

Graphics is handled by a PowerVR SGX545 unit. This does mean that it has more graphics capability than the Intel GMA series featured in old Atom netbooks, but sadly its no match for event the latest HD 4000 graphics from Intel which itself is in simple terms is crappy in the 3D performance aspect. In an era where we talk of multi-core/stream based graphics processors, the PowerVR graphics core is a single-core unit, and is sadly far less capable than the PowerVR units that are featured in the Apple IPad devices, and Android tablets. Intel should have coupled the Atom processor with a far more capable PowerVR unit so that the 3D capabilities of this SoC could have been improved.

Another concern over the Cloverleaf Atom and SGX545 combination is that, this was brought as a temporary measure for Intel to provide some decent low power graphics to its Atom range, and the proper Intel HD 4000 based Atom units are due soon. The PowerVR chip has gained very little support due to this fact, and with the arrival of an Intel HD based solution the driver support from Intel is sure to vane.

A recent test by the famous Anandtech on graphics capability across platforms shows that the PowerVR SGX545 is one of the weakest in the range, out done by practically all current mobility graphics cores. The Acer W510 was the preferred test platform but due to the fact the drivers kept crashing they had to shift to an ASUS with similar hardware, and the results were disappointing to say the least.

Memory

Memory is limited to 2GB (DDR2 type!) due to the SoC that this is built, and 2GB in recent times is definitely not enough for Windows based machines, so don’t plan to run anything serious on these devices.

Storage

Storage is handled by a SSD unit, but comes in a 32GB or 64GB format. Both to most will be rather limiting as the OS and the Acer recovery itself will take more than 20GB of that space. However the unit features a microSD slot that can take upto a 64GB micro SDXC card, that should boost storage.

But unlike its big brother the W700 with the Intel Core series processors, the Atom based units feature MMC based designs, which means you get miserable read and write performances even though the W510 features an internal SSD compared to the Intel Core based convertibles that have a mSATA implementation. This might explain why the startup from a full shutdown took over 30 secs, when all are speaking of under 5 second boot up times with SSD. This limitation will apply to all Intel Atom based tablet convertibles currently in the market.

Display

The display is a 10.1inch IPS backlit TFT unit with 1366×768 pixels, which may not be fancy but does a very very decent job. The resolution is very popular among most ultra books and laptops in the Windows market, and while it may not be as great as a full HD unit, i feel the lower resolution suits Windows 8 tablets since the higher resolution will make touch a nightmare. The display is classified as a 5-point capacitive touch screen and does not have digitizer as featured in the Surface Pro devices and Samsung Ativ devices, so while it does the job it does not have great touch capabilities.

Acer seems to be rather lacking in marketing flair as they miss out bragging that this device actually does come with a layer of Gorilla Glass 2 protection, a fairly important fact since many Android tablets miss this out.

The unit was configured with the font size scaling set to Medium (125%), however even with this enlarged font size, its not easy to use the tablet since the OS is bog standard windows except for the RT apps and the new Windows shell. Launching explorer and getting a file to be selected is only easy in icon view, if not good luck trying to select the correct file.

Here is where a digitizer and pen can be useful, and Microsoft Surface and the ATIV have got this sorted out. Sadly no such luck for the Acer W510.

In addition the rotation of the device is painfully slow, a trait that the Windows Phone 8 also shares, though in the case of Windows 8 its rotates like a snail, i am amazed why Microsoft seems so incapable of achieving this when all other vendors have done this with amazing ease. Rotation is nowhere even close to how quickly an Android tablet or phone manages, let along the silky smooth rotation of an IPad. Microsoft has a lot of work to do in this front for Windows 8 in any format to match the competition.

Battery

The device sports a fairly large 27Wh battery which supposedly can power the Tablet for over 8 hrs of usage, and over 3 weeks of standby. Again i could not test this, but all reviews confirm that the tab actually can last over 7hrs which is a pretty decent performance. What is more impressive is that when coupled with the battery in the dock the tab can extend to over 12-18hrs (and some cases based on usage over 20hrs) of usage, impressive. However considering the Atom processor is very much similar to an Arm based A9 quad-core in power, and also less capable in the 3D arena than such a device, this may not be much to brag.

However for what most would use this which is genera windows work, reading epub and PDF, browsing, the battery life performance maybe something that is very positive about this device.

The more powerful Intel Core i5 and i7 based convertibles struggle offer even 4-5 hours of performance in tablet format, and these throttle the processor when operating in tablet mode which also means you don’t get the chance to use it at full power. If you do want these more powerful devices can give you the horsepower but watch these devices drain juice so much that even 2hrs of usage maybe asking too much. Some such as the Surface Pro come with massive batteries (48Wh) and while this will give you good performance, i am sure the battery will not last too long, and your lifetime of your device may not be that great for pure tab use.

Another area the Clover Trail platform brings out is what Acer calls “Always On technology”. This means when you press the power button the machine goes into standby just like a normal Android or Apple tablet, and consumes very little power and offers standby of over 2-3 weeks. In addition pressing the power again gets the device back to life in under 3 secs. This capability is yet to reach the Intel Core series, which have very poor standby time.

So on the whole in the battery department the W510 does very very well is the short side of the story.

Connectivity

The tablet has been well designed with many options including a micro USB, micro HDMI, microSD onboard. Acer also provides the adapter so that you can use a USB device with the micro USB port if you require.

However one issue that you can point to the W510, similar to the Galaxy tab devices and the IPad devices is that it uses a proprietary cable for sync and charging, and avoids what is now a common option of using the micro USB port.

The dock sadly only provides a single USB 2.0 port, other than that it does not bring much more to the connectivity capabilities.

Camera

The W510 comes with a 8MP back camera with a LED flash

Weight

This is one area the Acer designers attempts at skimming has worked, as the tab with all the Intel hardware is just 576g in weight, which makes it lighter than most tablets. Add the dock it still is very light at 1.26kg.

What is missing compared to tablets from Apple and Android

The W510 is more a laptop in tablet format, than a true tablet is the first thing you have to realize, if not you are going to be mighty displeased.

The Windows tablets lack some capabilities that we may expect in modern tabby devices, mainly

No built-in 3G, but you can use a 3G dongle with no problems and work with this device. However the W511 model has built in 3G.

No GPS, now this is a weird miss, since any tablet like device i feel needs a GPS unit for map features as well as location specific apps

How does it work for general Windows applications

I tried the device out as a tablet that can help me do stuff i need to do from a Windows device on the move.

Microsoft Office: What more can i say it runs normal MS office and you have no limitations on the editing or viewing. The Atom processor is more than capable of providing satisfactory performances

Browsing: Comes with IE 10, but you can install any browser available for the Windows platform including Chrome. Browsing is smooth unlike the Atom processors in the netbooks, though it can slow down if you open too many tabs. This is maybe due to the a combined reason that it only has 2GB memory and the Atom processor is not power horse. However while i could not test the benchmarks personally, referring to several reviews indicated that the browser performance was actually far superior to the Android devices and Windows RT based devices, and even bests the performance of the King of tabs, the IPad 4 in some tests!

PDF viewing: I used the Windows PDF reader as opposed to Acrobat. The PDF rendering was pretty good, and i would say it performed better than quad-core Android tablets i have tried including the Tegra 3 on the Nexus 7 and the Exynos quad-core on the Note 10.1. The PDF rendering was also superior to the IPad 2 i had a while back. However the stability of the PDF reader bundles with Windows 8 seems a bit poor as it crashed out once when using.

I currently run Windows 8 on my work laptop which is a 3rd Gen Core i5 with 8GB RAM, but with a standard 5400rpm hard disk. Compared to this machine in the above applications the Atom based W510 performed decent enough, however things that i could not try, but which i found on the web were,

Very poor performance when unzipping and zipping files (directly attributed to the poor Atom processor)

Very poor performance in video and music conversion (Again due to the poor Atom processor, and also due to the fact that the PowerVR graphics is only used with the Atom, hence the third party app support for acceleration is non-existence for this graphics core)

Poor multi-tasking performance (this is more due to the 2GB limitation of the SoC platform, there is no way you can upgrade memory for these units)

Gaming capabilities is practically non-existent, check out Anandtech where the frame rates were checked of the PowerVR on the CloverTrail to other platforms including Android and Apple devices. It comes last in most cases.

How does it work with Windows RT applications

Unlike Windows RT devices, the Windows 8 devices can run both native Windows apps as well as RT apps. Further currently most RT devices running Windows are using the Tegra 3 based SoC though some such as the unit from Dell use the Qualcom Krait based solution with the Adreno 225 graphics. However it seems the Atom combined with the PowerVR unit can do better than, indicating that even the “rock bottom” processors in the Intel line up are more powerful than the cutting edge mobile units from Qualcomm, and Nvidia however sadly the Intel units cannot match the miserly power consumption of the Arm based devices other than with the Atom based units.

I only tried one RT app which was a game, and it played quite smoothly however as more powerful games roll out for the RT market, the Atom and the PowerVR chip are unlikely to be able to sustain this, so don’t by this if you are thinking this is going to be storming gaming platform, and not that the Windows RT store has any large number of good games!

Multimedia experience

The tablet comes with stereo speakers that are astonishingly loud, much louder than any Android tablet i have used, now that is great. However the speakers are beautifully placed such that its the place you keep your hands when you hold the tab in landscape mode, which means you end up blocking the speakers and muffling the sound. Good job speaker designer, bad job tab layout designer for Acer.

I played some music and found that the speakers were pretty decent with the sound quality, which was impressive.

I then tried some videos including 720P and 1080P. I had read in many reviews the Atom processor and the PowerVR graphics chip were not very good at 1080P, however with the Windows 8 video player the unit played 1080P videos pretty darn fine. However it seems MKV format was not supported by the native player.

The owner of the tab had installed KM player, but this player definitely does not support hardware acceleration for the PowerVR chip, and was struggling to play even 720p videos smoothly. I could not try the VLC media player, possibly this may do a better job.

The Dock

Acer did well to make a dock that also had an additional battery that would make this tablet one of the longest running devices in the market with over 18hrs of usage time combined. Once the tablet is attached to the dock, an auto lock is enabled to avoid the tab from falling, and it looks and feels like a proper laptop once its attached.

However it seems if the dock is not powered, the dock will not charge the tablet battery, but the tab will use the battery in the dock. If the dock is connected to a power source, then the dock will charge the tablet battery while it powers the tablet.

A cool design that the Acer engineers have done for the W510 is that when you rotate the laptop keyboard backwards so that you can use the laptop like a picture frame or use the keyboard as a stand, the keyboard is auto disabled so that the keys facing the surface will not cause any interferences.

The dock provides only one full USB port, to be more precise an USB 2.0 port 😦 Acer could have done better by including an additional port so that you can use a mouse, etc and preferably a USB 3.0 port for fast data transfers.

Acer designers seem to have set their priorities to make the combined dock and tablet very light weight, but in doing that they have done a criminal mistake in that the dock is lighter than the tablet since all the PC hardware now resides in the tablet.

This uneven balance means that unlike a proper laptop the W510 when connected to the dock tends to tip back very easily and is nearly impossible to use if you are seated and want to have it on your lap. For all such use, you are better off using it in tablet mode.

The next IMPORTANT bit that the designers have screwed up is the keyboard, the feel is very cheap and plasticky and the keyboard has very poor feel, and is rather slow. The ability to type fast as in the case of a normal laptop keyboard is practically impossible, so don’t for one moment think that this dock is going to make this a full fledged laptop.

The touchpad in the dock does not have any of the multi touch capabilities that new laptops have, and it merely provides basic capabilities. However compared to the rest of the ill fated design, this performs acceptably.

The dock does not have any fancy features such as a providing the ability to attach a hard disk so in the dock, which is a cool feature you see with the ASUS transformer Windows convertible.

A lesson that convertible designers have to get is that while low weight is important, by making the dock super light you mess up the balance, and then any advantage of the convertible format is gone. For buyers you are recommended to try out the device with the dock to see if it works for you, and if you are buying purely based on online, see the reviews as well as the weight of the tablet and the dock separately, if the tab weights more its most likely that tab will not balance well with the dock and provide you pure laptop capability.

RECOVERY and RESET

Here is something that you have to know. The tablet convertible in all essence is a laptop with the hardware on the screen than under a keyboard. Which means if you want to recover you have to do it like a laptop.

The Acer W510 64GB version comes with a separate recovery partition, which allows you to recover it just like a laptop. However the 32GB version is to small to have a recovery partition which needs almost 11GB, so the recovery is provided as 3 DVDs. if you by any chance delete the recovery or have to recover the 32GB version things are not simple.

Based on my findings on the Acer forums its quite “complicated” and includes the following. This is because its a laptop in tablet format, the Windows RT devices feature recoveries similar to what we see with Android and Apple devices since the platform is smaller and pure tablet type.

Connecting a proper USB keyboard to the device with the provided micro USB to USB adapter. You cannot use the provided dock keyboard since it uses a proprietary port which Windows cannot understand.

You have to then boot in recovery mode

Once you have booted to recovery mode you have to attach an USB DVD drive and insert the recovery disks to get back to the original state

Useful links if you are recovering or want to install Windows 8 Pro which is not bundled with the W510 usually include,

Conclusion

To start off, the important thing to realize is that these full fledged Windows 8 convertible tablets, are not really a competitor to the IPad/Android tablets, as that is supposed to be handled by the Windows RT OS devices. These devices are in reality an alternative to an ultrabook or laptop, with the added advantage that you can use it as a tablet if you desire. However the OS is the one we are all to familiar and hence don’t expect any real touch friendly assistance.

What you get is that you can run all RT based applications assuming the graphics can be be handled (the Tegra 3 and Adreno 225 units are far more capable on the 3D area than the PowerVR unit on the Atom SoC), plus that you can run normal Windows applications in one single device.

You also get the ability to run normal Microsoft Office (though unlike the RT version, you don’t get a free license!) along with other download tools that are not well supported on the tablet OS platforms such as iOS and Android.

So to me these devices bring what Windows users have been craving for many years, and were not able to get hold of such devices and had to opt for twist type screens on the laptops.

But the story is not a great one for the Cloverleaf Atom + PowerVR graphics unit that is featured in the Acer W510 and other similar rival devices. The key reason is not the processing power of the Atom processor, but rather the limited capabilities of the PowerVR graphics core, and more so that fact that its an interim solution until Intel got out its HD graphics based solutions which should give the ideal platform. This can already been seen on the similar but massively greater performing Intel Corei5/i7 ULV based convertibles.

If you really need one of these devices save up and get the i5/i7 based convertibles is my advice, or wait for the Intel HD graphics based Atom SoC that should provide far better performance, and assured driver support.

The Acer W510 offers much, and has many design decisions that are truly great, and its battery life is something that shows Intel based chips and Windows can compete against the others in battery life and general performance, but its the next gen Atom with the extra juice which is going to be the real steal, and that may come in the form of the W520 🙂 Get that when it comes….